Tick Tock Tick, Tock.....

Well, I am two weeks closer to my surgery.  Only 5 weeks left to wait.  The surgeon tells me that as soon as I wake up I will be able to open my mouth to a semi normal width....  I can almost remember what that is like.  Right now I can open my mouth just barely larger than my little finger.  The surgeon tells me that we will need stay in Miami for about a month after the surgery to make sure that there aren't complications.  I can think of worse places to have to stay.  Miami should be lovely.  JoLynne has a knack for finding nice places to stay.  She searches all these varied websites where people are renting their houses.  The house she found in Miami is truly beautiful.  Very nice,  looking out over a lake.  It will be nice to have a nice place to recover in.

We have loved having our sweet son Peter home from his mission.  He has a glow about him.  He still stomps me at ping pong but he is so nice about it.  Every time he destroys me in a ping pong game he comes around the table, hugs me and tells me he loves me.

In general my health is greatly improved.  It's so nice to have some energy back again.  I still deal with pain but at least I have some energy.  This weekend I planted my garden, scrubbed my fish pond and moved all the rabbit droppings into my garden.  I kind of wonder why things grown in animal pooh taste so good.  Maybe it's best not to think about that.

Dive baby Dive!

"The Tank"

Today I finished my 23rd hyperbaric dive.  That means I have spent 46 hours in that tank and watched 90% of 23 movies.  Just once I would like to watch the end of a movie.  The plan is for 40 dives so I have 17 left.  They had told me not to expect much until about dive number 20.  I think I started to see some subtle changed around dive 18.  Now the changes are beginning to be more distinct and they are changes for the better Yeah!

The most important change is in my pain level.  Since about Mid July I have been living on a custom topical agent that I have formulated by my pharmacist.  If I don't keep my mouth constantly numb I have intense pain that is hard to describe.  I guess my best description is that it feels like someone is driving an ice pick through my ear into my tongue.  Not pleasant at all.  Speaking and eating add to the pain.  So, I live on Ibuprophen and Tylenol taken by the clock combined with my topical applied every two hours day and night.  Around dive 18 I noticed that I could go a little longer before running for my topical.  Next I started skipping ibuprophen doses when I was too busy to take them and... surviving.  Last night I woke up when the pain woke me and I thought "I could almost bear this without medication" but then I got up and took some anyway because I am a wimp.  Anyway, I am getting better and....I AM SO HAPPY!  I love hyperbaric therapy!

All the comforts of home

One of the interesting things about this whole journey are the people that you meet along the way.  When I began hyperbaric therapy I was diving with an ENT surgeon.  He was out walking his dog when suddenly he went blind in his left eye.  He ran to the doctor and the found that his left retina had lost all of it's blood supply.  They didn't know if it was a stroke or some other reason that caused the blood to quit flowing.  They rushed him to hyperbaric.  His wife told me that they couldn't locate their home teachers so they asked the on-call wound care physician and the hyperbaric tech to give him a blessing. (I love living in Utah where you could make such a request and have a high probability that they would both be worthy priesthood holders)  So, they gave him a priesthood blessing and put him in the tank.  After his second dive 75% of his vision suddenly re-appeared.  Subsequent dives continued to show improvement until all he had left was a small dark spot in the center.  Another fellow in the chamber knelt down in his workshop and cut his knee.  He didn't think much about it until a week later when it started to swell and get red lines.  He went to the ER and they began treating him for cellulitus.  As he was waiting for another treatment a surgeon happened by, not called for, looked at his leg and said, "This isn't cellulitus, it's flesh eating bacteria!"  They took him right into surgery and thanks to their skills and hyperbaric it looks like he won't lose his leg.  Anyway, the stories go on and on.

Look what we found in the packing peanuts!

I am grateful to live when I do and to have such miraculous treatments available.  My tongue and ear are grateful too.

My dear little grand daughter has begun to walk.  She is so proud of herself.  I am so grateful to be alive to watch the miracle of her little life unfold.

The end at last!

Friday was my last day of chemotherapy.  Seven rounds and twenty one dose later I am so ready to be done.  This last regimen started out somewhat easier but each progressive round has been more difficult.  This last round has pretty well knocked me off my feet.  With a few interruptions, I have slept almost 72 hours.  I could fall asleep again now but I am so sick of sleeping!  At the completion of chemotherapy they have a bell for you to ring signifying that you have finished your treatment.  Ringing that bell caused JoLynne and I to shed a few tears.  Everyone in the room cheered and clapped.  I wish that they could be done as well.  Someday somebody is going to figure out a way to treat cancer without chemotherapy.  That will be a wonderful day.

Cancer must be catching

Just a few empty seats

It has been a little over a week since my last post here.  I really should have written sooner  It was a wonderful week.  I am learning through personal experience more about this chemo business.  Hitting your "low" is no fun and feeling good thereafter is amazing.  Boy it brings that "opposition in all things" scripture to life in a very real way.  

Last week JoLynne and I traveled back to Minnesota again for follow up visits with the surgeons.  Mayo clinic will always be a place of miracles to me.  The surgeons were delighted to see how I was progressing.  As we visited with one of the surgeons, an LDS man, he said, "You know, I can always tell when we operate on someone who is being prayed for.  Things just go differently in the operating room."    He then told us that a number of such miracles occurred during my surgery.  I think we are aware of many of them but he told us something that we hadn't heard.

Apparently, when the tumor was removed it was given to the pathologists who were in the operating room.  While they began their initial analysis, the surgeons proceeded to take out borders around the tumor to make sure that the cancer hadn't spread into adjacent tissue.    After a bit, the pathologists announced that my tumor was benign.  (They changed their mind later, as you may remember).  Our surgeon told us that the normal protocol at that point would be to discard the borders that had been harvested.  It makes no sense to analyze the borders of a benign tumor.  He said that they were about to throw them in the garbage can when one of the surgeons said, "I just don't feel good about that.  I think we need to have the border evaluated still.  Send them to pathology."  They proceeded to send them to pathology and, as you know the tumor later proved to be malignant.  The borders that were sent and reviewed were all clean.  If they had not analyzed the borders they would have had no way of knowing that it hadn't spread and I would have had to go through radiation therapy as a precaution.  It would have made my recovery much more complicated.  So, for those of you who have been kind enough to pray for us through this challenge, THANK YOU AGAIN! Prayer really makes a difference!

Our trip home was also good.  We had a little extra space on the airplane, as you can see.  My guess is that there are rumors going around that cancer is contagious.  With those kind of rumors we may have trouble getting plane tickets in the future if the airline industry sees a pattern.

Well,  on Wednesday I began another series of chemotherapy.  I felt well enough today to go into to office.  I was grateful.  I was able to provide some services to some of my sweet patients.  We will see what tomorrow brings.  "One day at a time"; that is my motto these days.

Still kicking

It has been a while since I last sat down to chronicle my journey through cancer.  Partially it's because I am lazy, but mostly it has been the difficulty of the last two weeks.  Chemotherapy has been a lot more harsh than I expected.  For the 14 days following chemotherapy my energy and well being steadily declined until I hit the bottom last Wednesday.    That's not to say that I didn't have times when I felt better.  For three or four days I felt well enough to go to work in the morning but then I would come home and crash.  Twice I felt bad enough that I had to go to the clinic and have fluids and medications given.  Wednesday morning I woke up and had no energy.  Just walking to the bathroom would exhaust me.  My ear was swollen near the surgery site and I had a fever.  We have two thermometers so my temperature was either 100.8 or 101.4, depends on which thermometer we believed.   We called the nurse and she sent us to the Emergency room.  It was a long day.  They drew blood, took urine, took x-rays etc.  Finally they came in and the ER doctor sat by my bed and said, "Your white blood count is in the toilet.  You have no white blood cells left except a few we found in your urine and you have an infection.  We are going to have to admit you to the hospital."  I was barely conscious and not liking what I was hearing.  They started me on IV antibiotics through my port and pushed fluids by the oncologists orders.  After a couple of hours they came back and had decided that because my son-in-law is a nurse they would let me go home if I wanted.  Heck, I wasn't anxious to stay in the hospital.  That's were you get really bad infections.  We were glad to be discharged.  The nurse came in to take out the needle in my port.  She kind of woke me up and said, "You are going to feel a tug as I pull this out".  Just as she said that this voice went off in my head.  "Don't let her pull it without flushing the port and heparin!"  I woke up just in time and asked her about the flush and heparin.  Her countenance just dropped.  "I can't believe I almost forgot that".  She left the room to get what she needed to do it right.  A port is like a little plastic box in my chest that connects directly to my major blood vessels that enter my heart.  If you don't rinse it you can end up with infections in them, very nasty. The heparin keeps the box from filling up with clotted blood, again a very nasty  and dangerous problem.  I was so grateful that I was protected.  The nurse really felt bad and I told her, don't worry, the important thing is that we remembered.  I'm glad for that prompting.

The next day was Thanksgiving.  I was going to write a blog about so many things I was thankful for but I just couldn't get up enough energy.  I told JoLynne, I feel like I have a great engine and one teaspoon of gas.  Every time I would get up I would have to lay back down and get my teaspoon back again.  I did feel well enough to sit at the table with everyone for about half an hour which was nice.  From that point on my energy has been returning.  Everyday I have felt better than the day before, more energy, less tired, less pain.  Somedays, I feel almost normal.

Yesterday my hair started falling out in earnest.  Every time I would run my hands through my hair my hands would come out full of hair.  I didn't expect this to bother me so much as a man but it really did.  For the last few days I kept having nightmares of my hair all being on my pillow in the morning or something like that.  I told JoLynne that I was going to pray that I woke up with all my hair gone and that she had a 3 inch pony tail.  She laughed and didn't think God would allow that miracle.  Well, I finally got tired of watching it fall out slowly and we decided to cut it all off last night.  Mike, my son-in-law, wanted to cut his hair as well, which I kept telling him was unnecessary but he insisted.  We got Seth online via Skype so that he could watch the festivities through the computer.  First Mike cut off my hair than I cut his.  Then Spencer popped up and said he wanted his off as well.    Spencer's hair is amazing,  thick and soft and so full.  Kind of a shame to cut it but he insisted.  So three heads got bald that night.  Several men in the high priests quorum have offered to cut their hair as well.  Gee, it's going to be cold winter for all of us.  Today, Seth sent an email from China.  He went to the barber the next day and had his hair cut as well.  We didn't go all the way bald since I worry about cutting myself with a razor while on chemo so it's just really short.  I went in to shower and looked at myself in the mirror after the hair cut.  I decided that  I look like one of the pictures of the Jews in the concentration camps.  Mostly bald and so pale and emaciated due to the chemo.  Lucky for the rest of the world that I wear clothes.  Trust me, it isn't pretty.

Sampson before Delilah

What I was getting every time I touched my hair

Not quite as bald as Bishop but I am working on it

Bald is beautiful

Even in China

This Star patient is ready to come home.

Well, I have been unusually quiet for some time now.  Not because I didn't have anything to say but rather because the internet was broken at the house where we are staying and I am simply not patient enough to post a blog using my phone.

My healing is progressing well.  Sometimes those days right after surgery just seem like a dream.  I am grateful for what they were able to do but I don't really like hanging out in hospitals very much.  The last time I spent a night in the hospital as a patient was December 24, 1960.  They wouldn't let me out then because I was in the newborn nursery.  Oh how the great have fallen!

We have been fortunate to have a lovely home to stay in as I regain my strength. (thanks to JoLynne). Shanelle and Mike were able to be at the house for a couple of days, then they went home to take care of our other little cutie pies. (Peter and Spencer are still cutie pies, albeit, not so little any more!)  Seth was able to stay until Thursday morning when his flight left for him to go back to China.  Wednesday we took the opportunity to drive up to the temple and do a session with Seth.  This was amazing and wonderful and it was a blessing that I felt good enough to attend a session.  Even though the whole surgery thing  hasn't been pleasant, it has been a very spiritual few weeks for JoLynne and I, and the temple was a wonderful place to be.  We didn't have our own temple clothes but they had some to lend.  I felt bad that my right leg wound was still weeping enough that when I finished the session I looked down to see the right leg of my pants somewhat bloodied.   The ladies at the desk were super nice "No problem, I have something that will get that right out". Later, I was expressing my dismay to someone and they said, "Now you know how we women feel".  Weird, I didn't know that women had spontaneous bleeding from their calves.  There is so much I don't know.

After we left the temple. we wanted to take a picture of the three of us in front of the temple but had no one to take the picture.  Only a moment passed before a car stopped full of women who were leaving the temple and asked if they could help us.  (Minnesota is overrun with nice people)  As we visited for a moment it turned out that the woman who had stopped grew up in the same general neighborhood where I grew up.  She asked my name and I said "We are the Vogel's"  to which she replied "Eric Vogel?, I was just reading about you on Facebook this morning.  My friend had asked me to pray for you."  Wow, we live in an interesting and small world.


Friday I had my visits with the surgeons.  They were very pleased and kept saying nice things like "You are our star patient", and "We just love it when things turn out this way" and "It's so nice to operate on someone healthy for a change"  They don't know that I have numerous prayers being offered in my behalf.  How could I help but heal well.  They took a panoramic radiograph of my new jaw.  It is so interesting to see the "new me".  JoLynne has been walking around singing  "The leg bone's connected to the Jaw bone". Very appropriate for Halloween.

Today, we went to church, but only the first hour.  For some reason I was really feeling tired.  This afternoon I felt quite a bit better so we went and drove around town and found a cool mansion to walk around.

Tomorrow we meet with the chemotherapy doctors. I am not really looking forward to going through chemotherapy but I also don't want to risk this coming back.  I have read quite a bit about osteosarcomas since my diagnosis.  The survival rates have really gone up in the last few years and it is largely due to chemotherapy.  Sarcomas have a nasty habit of spreading through the blood to distant sites.  Chemotherapy seems to stop that from happening quite effectively.  The good thing about it will be walking up to Bishop Broderick and asking him how it feels to have so much hair.  That will be a sweet day.

Before you can run, first you must walk

I had JoLynne and the kids take videos and pictures along the way partly so that when I get discouraged I can look back and see how much progress I have made. The first video was taken on Wednesday, 2 days after surgery. I think it should count as my 12th marathon. The second was taken 7 days after surgery or today. God continues to be good to us.

Hey, I'm alive!

Well, I'm sorry about the short entry last night. I was completely exhausted but thought that I had enough energy to write about one sentence. Getting my wedding ring back was the most important thing that I could think of. JoLynne and I have been married 28 plus years. I don't think in all those years I have been without my ring more than a few hours. She wore it for me while I was going through all of this. As she put it "It will be safe here and look, it's really close to mine."

I really appreciate Shanelle keeping everyone posted while I was indisposed. She is a sweet daughter in so many ways.

I am so appreciative of each of you for your love, your prayers and your faith. I believe that God hears and answers prayers. Sometimes things don't turn out just like we would like them to, but when we really pour out our hearts to God, things do work out. In the bible dictionary, under prayer, it says:

"As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part. Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work, and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings."

I believe that statement.

This has been an amazing week. Shanelle has shared much of what has happened. There are some things that probably shouldn't be shared. Suffice it to say, we have felt and seen the Hand of God and I have never felt that I walked this path alone.Yesterday I was discharged from the hospital, ahead of schedule. The original plan called for 7-10 days in the hospital. I think we are basically on the "custom plan" schedule now. The tracheotomy tube came out a day or two early. By the way, for any of you who may have had those in the past, I really apologize for not showing you more compassion. All I can say is "WOW AND YUCK". The NG tube that allowed them to feed me through my nose to my stomach came out Friday, 10 days ahead of schedule. One of the older nurses told me that she had never seen one come out in less than two weeks in a case like mine. All the rest of the pumps, tubes, IV's, and cast came off Saturday Morning. They then told me that I could be discharged early if I wanted. It helps to have my son in law Mike here, he is an ICU nurse for Utah valley and a darn good one. Or maybe I was just so dang grouchy they would do anything to see me out of there. That is quite possible. I was thrilled to be discharged. Oh, and JoLynne gave me back my wedding ring! I was so grateful for so many kind, knowledgable doctors and nurses who took care of me. Many of them had the opportunity to hear my testimony. I plan on sharing that more often.

There has been a lot going through my mind these last few days. I believe I will survive this cancer. I have been given another season in my life to see what I will do. I try to think of what I can do better and what the Lord wants me to learn from all of this. My nights have been largely sleepless as my mind races in circles. Friday night sleep wouldn't come. At about 3:00 am I finally sat up in bed and said, "Hey Heavenly Father, are you there?" I had that warm feeling that he was so I said "Are you having trouble sleeping too?" Sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just zap me and get it over with. Anyway, we had a good talk during that night.

(The view out our windows)

Well, this is too long. JoLynne rented, (for $80 a night) a beautiful house that looks out over the river. That woman can find a bargain! I hope she didn't choose me because I was cheap. I prefer to be considered "a good value" We will be here until Oct 31 for a few follow up visits but mostly to make sure I don't have complications that need to be attended to. Thank you again for all your love and support. We look forward to being home.

Okay, God must think my faith is weak or that I need constant reminders. JoLynne just called me over and pointed out the plaque hanging on the wall here just as you enter the door.